England regularly qualify for the major tournaments with relative ease, but have not been beyond the last eight of any since Euro 96, when they were beaten in the semi-finals. The Three Lions were tipped to impress at the most recent World Cup in South Africa over the summer, but they limped through the group and were well beaten by Germany in the second round. "England have always had really good players - absolutely world class," said Sorensen, whose Denmark side face England on Wednesday. "As a team, you look at them player by player and they are only behind Spain and Brazil, and England belong to a group of eight to 10 countries capable of winning the World Cup next time. "England always go through easily in the qualifying stages but maybe the players are tired when they get to the World Cup and European Championships in the summer after the long and very hard English season. "They just never seem to deliver what people - and themselves - expect." Sorensen has been in England for the past 13 years having joined Sunderland in 1998, and he feels the long and tough Premier League campaign takes it toll on the players. "I always follow England. I've lived there a long time, for 13 years, watch them on TV, follow them and wish them the best - England has become a bit of a second country," he added. "It's always difficult to analyse from the outside, I wasn't close to it but there's been a lot of talk about the long English season and maybe a few players were burnt out a bit. "You can't really tell though and I'll let Capello analyse it. It ends up being a long season but I still feel that the World Cup is such a big thing that you can gather resources to get through it. But it didn't seem to gel. "We had our problems with injuries and a lot of players not being on form, but on paper that shouldn't have been the case with England."
